John Walker's Electronic House

In a very special edition of Rum Doings, we are joined by comedy writer John Finnemore. We have discussed Mr Finnemore’s work on Rum Doings in the past, especially the fantastic Radio 4 sitcom Cabin Pressure. He’s worked on very many radio and television comedies, perhaps most notably as a lead writer for Mitchell & Webb on both Radio 4 and BBC 2, and despite this still agreed to join us for our twentieth episode.

There’s a topic not under discussion this week too: how are we going to inoculate ourselves against Britain’s road rage epidemic.

You’ll not be surprised to learn much of the topics this week are radio and TV comedy – subjects we’ve spoken about a great deal before. We begin with Cabin Pressure, and quickly move on to the sitcoms that inspired Finnemore, especially Yes Minister. Then find out which surprising 70s sitcom David Mitchell is a fan of, as well as enjoy a brief dissection of The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. Nick attempts to get John W in trouble, telling tales about his disliking of Fawlty Towers, and then everything goes horribly wrong…

Finnemore defends Victoria Wood’s ‘dinnerladies’. Oh dear. It all falls apart. It almost comes to blows.

Fortunately we quickly move on to John Shuttleworth, good comedy we can all agree on. This takes us to Dad’s Army, which in turn brings us back to Cabin Pressure, especially the desert episode and the fantastic appearance of John Sessions. Nick then launches into a brilliant attempt to tell Finnemore that he’s wrong about the nature of one of his own characters – one he even voices himself. This leads to a lovely discussion of the nature of happiness, as viewed through the Goons.

After more discussion of Cabin Pressure, then talk of the relationship between The Mitchell & Webb Sound and Look, we arrive at the topic of comedians doing advertising. Then changing from commercials to the other side, there’s talk of why the BBC is such a great thing but so desperately lacking self-confidence.

Huge thanks to John Finnemore for joining us for our twentieth episode. We strongly recommend you get hold of Cabin Pressure. It’s a funny and warm radio sitcom of the like that’s very rare today. You can buy both series from Audible here and here, or from iTunes here and here. Oh, and we should probably add that you can hear Finnemore on this week’s episode of The Now Show, 6.30, Friday on Radio 4. Yes, we’re aware of the irony of this.

Do let other people know about this episode, by whichever means you think best. And writing a review on iTunes helps us a great deal. We’d appreciate it.

If you want to email us, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Episode 19 is here. This week’s topic isn’t: Why are we English too ASHAMED to celebrate St. George’s Day with due dignity and respect, properly? Which is embarrassing to even type.

Things more realistically begin with an explanation of the spiteful nature of tea, pet names for pets, and that which we’ve changed from hating to liking. Find out what temperature we’ve decided will keep your babies alive, and how John disagrees with all baby-based wisdom, leading to Nick denying his daughter her wings.

Of course we talk about Mr Blobby, and Noel’s House Party, and the Late Late Breakfast Show. But you’d been expecting that. And find out who electrocuted an elephant to death. Hear Nick play the mouth-banjo. Don’t hear Nick tell his Oxford interview story. But do hear stories of examinations.

This takes us back to school days, remembering teachers good and bad, and times we went out of our way to get in trouble. And then, more positively, favourite teachers.

There’s a few things we ask for in return for this lovely gift. Could you retweet about it, demand people on forums have a listn, or find any other way to tell new people to listen? And writing a review on iTunes helps us a great deal. We’d appreciate it.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Seems like it’s fun to post this while it’s still under 200k views, but in a larger part because this is a celebration of a victory over EMI, with the video being embeddable. To find out why that matters, see here. Meanwhile, this is absolutely astonishing, whether the cut after the blue curtains is terrible or not. Cheers to Kim for alerting me.

So yes, I’m doing H again, but that’s because I just discovered How To Make It In America. So there it is. There’s the notable exception of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia below. It’s a brilliant show and I’m seasons behind. I’ll eventually catch up, because it’s always worth watching. But I haven’t, and don’t have anything relevant to say about it.

If you read nothing else in this post, please watch the video under Leverage. It’s four minutes that won’t be wasted.

How To Make It In America – HBO

To describe it this sounds like every first-year student TV writing project. Two guys who live on the edge of a criminal lifestyle, yet somehow hanging out on the elite New York partying scene, swearing at each other and attracting all who pass by. Yet the delivery changes a lot. The cast is strong (Luis Guzmán being reliably menacing alongside the younger, prettier crowd), and it’s occasionally aesthetically inspired. The direction is smart, and with a fantastic soundtrack (helpfully documented on the show’s site), its presentation helps cover gaps the perhaps not stunningly original themes may leave. The second scene of the first episode, pulling back to reveal Victor Rasuk standing on the back of a bicycle ridden by a Hasidic Jewish boy, outlines the smart wit. “Stay strong, He-brew.”

It’ll be interesting to see if the guys-struggling-to-keep-up-with-the-scene story is strong enough to sustain. In terms of story theme it feels like it falls halfway between the astonishing Bored To Death and the atrocious Entourage. There’s a tendency for the characters to speak in speeches, which feels a shame in a show that would benefit from a more naturalistic delivery. The heavy script of Bored To Death works so well because it’s so spectacularly refined, but here it seems to be holding things back somewhat. People don’t say, “He who hesitates masturbates!” and then twinkle their eyes. And perhaps they didn’t need the drunk guy shouting to his ex-girlfriend from the street scene immediately. Or someone complaining about being woken up and pulling the pillow over their head… But wow, the soundtrack helps me forgive a lot.

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Here is a handy guide to understanding the future of the BBC under the Conservatives. A schools pack is available.

Stuart X: It’s like that thing they had to cancel with local-news websites or video or something last year, because it was so good that commercial operations couldn’t compete.
Stuart X: WHY THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO CARE ABOUT THAT?
Stuart X: We’re forced by law to pay for something that’s made deliberately worse.
John X: Don’t worry, not for much longer!
Stuart X: They’re going to stop charging?!??!!???!!?
John X: Entirely!
Stuart X: And it won’t turn out to be just another shitty ITV??!?!?!!?!?!
John X: No no, you misunderstand.
John X: Imagine it like this:
John X: Imagine I’m a bread shop.
John X: And I sell bread for 80p a loaf.
John X: Okay?
Stuart X: Following you so far.
John X: So if you want some bread, currently you have to pay me 80p.
John X: Well, what’s going to happen under the nice Mr Cameron is my bread shop is going to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb.
John X: So you won’t have to pay 80p for bread ever again!
Stuart X: But where will I get bread?
John X: There’s no bread.
Stuart X: I don’t understand! I LIKE BREAD!
John X: Be quiet.
Stuart X: The only other stuff I can put marmalade on is made by Ian’s Tasty Vittles down the road, and it’s made of dogshit.
John X: I said be quiet.
Stuart X: And I have to stop eating every three bites so I can throw up.
John X: Can somebody call the police?

New Rule. It’s an emergency one.

#38 NO ONLINE ACCOUNTS FOR BABIES OR PETS OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT ISN’T YOU.

Completely outlawed are Twitter, Facebook, Bebo or whatever else accounts for anyone that isn’t you. Your baby can neither read nor write, let alone comprehend what Twitter is. Your baby is a barely sentient parasite, and there’s nothing cute or endearing about pretending that he or she is writing your observations that you somehow think – despite there being almost 7 billion people are alive – are unique to your vomiting blob.

The same goes for pets. Your cat isn’t typing, is it? What is it doing? It’s ignoring you, isn’t it? Your cat has better things to do than you, which is why it’s not writing on Twitter about how much it loves its mummy. You are. So stop it, because good grief.

I’m reposting this piece about Psych written about a year and a half ago as it’s no longer online elsewhere. Giant Realm briefly had me writing about TV (one day, somewhere, I’ll get a regular gig writing about TV for a magazine or website that won’t immediately close down) before they pulled their entire blog. This is the unedited version, because the edited was so comprehensively translated into American that it often didn’t read like me.

And I should add in the interests of balance, this week’s episode of Psych was awful. Fortunately, last week’s was one of the best ever.

At the mention of its name, the reaction people give to Psych tends to be, “That show? Really? I saw maybe one episode – it seemed alright.” I want to put that right. I want to convince you that Psych is the most entertaining show on TV this summer. I will use a collection of silly names, and a pineapple.

The show’s conceit, to put it mildly, is contrived. Shawn Spencer (James Roday, Miss Match) is the son of a retired cop, who spent his childhood having observational skills drummed into him by his forbidding father. As an adult he’s kept his hyper-observant talents, but no job for longer than three months. That’s until his habit for solving crimes by watching the local evening news caused the police to become suspicious. Needing a way out to prevent his being arrested, he invented the story that he was a psychic, convincing the officers and detectives by throwing out a few ‘hot reads’ based on all the stuff his eagle eyes had spotted. Well, convincing all of them but one, the surly Detective Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) remaining heavily sceptical.

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In an unprecedented eighteenth episode of Rum Doings we don’t discuss what we will do on Earth about potholes. However, we do quite brilliantly demonstrate how to drink. And then immediately return to our favourite topic of recent times: ketchup. Via some quite astonishing observation comedy, of course. But we promise the ketchup talk is confined to only the beginning.

Then there’s happy stories of service experiences, which leads us to what will be remembered by history as the greatest series of “time” themed puns mankind has ever heard. And welcome to the new job title: the shorekeeper. Then there’s Nick’s racist t-shirt and his mule child.

Then it’s time for part two of The Rules, which those who didn’t want us to do any more will be pleased to learn completes the collection. Where we learn that all our listeners should all embrace death, because they can’t be bothered to promote us or write to us.

There’s a few things we ask for in return for this present. Could you retweet about it, or find a way to tell new people to listen? And writing a review on iTunes helps us a great deal. We’d appreciate it.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

I missed out so many the last time I did this, and with The Amazing Race having started, I feel like I should start from A again. But really this is F-H, with a few extras beforehand. I’ve decided to implement a code. If there’s spoilers in the piece I’ll have * at the start of stuff you shouldn’t read. Assume that it will spoil anything that’s happened in that show up to the current (US) episode. There are also some bad swears in there, delicate-eared readers. Oh, and let me know if I’ve missed anything. I know there’s still stuff from A-E that I’ve forgotten a second time.

The Amazing Race – CBS

Well, what’s to say. Eleven teams of two in a race around the world. It’s such a huge idea, and it’s still working sixteen seasons in. Perhaps what I like best about the global scale racing nonsense is that the best teams tend to win. Stupid people go out first, unpleasant people then follow, and generally it’s the nice lot left to win at the end. And if you don’t love Phil, there’s something wrong with your DNA.

Burn Notice – USA

Season one of this programme was confused. After a horrible pilot it quickly ditched a few ideas, found a groove, but didn’t really know whether to take itself seriously. By season three it really knows what it wants to be. Light-hearted, while dealing with life or death situations. The gimmick – that burned spy Michael Weston narrates giving advice to the audience for how to be a spy in various situations – still works. And it seems to trust Bruce Campbell to be Bruce Campbell a lot more. The most recent episode featured Campbell doing the most fantastic spoof of CSI, openly playing for laughs, as is more frequently the case. The theme now is for Weston to have a long-running nemesis whom he must work for/against in the hope it will get him closer to learning who burned him, while taking on weekly cases for the seemingly infinite number of friends of friends in trouble. This means we get to see him trying juggle both situations, and inevitably his chain smoking mother, while teaching us how to bug a car or break into a guarded office. It’s so silly, and thankfully it now knows it.

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Family Guy enjoys being offensive. It does it with glee. As creator Seth McFarlane likes to say, they’re an “equal opportunity offender”. I’m struggling to think of a subject they haven’t made wildly inappropriate jokes about. Racial stereotypes, paedophilia, infanticide, rape, degenerative disorders, disabilities, the Holocaust… A large part of the point of watching the programme is gasping in shock with your hands clasped to your mouth, unsure if you’re stifling a cry of horror or a laugh.

There have been other programmes that have taken this “no taboos” rule to more effective and more shocking places, such as the astonishing Wonder Showzen, and Drawn Together. But these were on cable. Family Guy is on at primetime on Sunday nights on Fox. Having been cancelled twice by the network, it’s proven itself fairly invincible, and with McFarlane’s new contract breaking all records they know they’re not going anywhere. And to embrace this the most recent episodes having been pushing things further and further, including as many digs at Fox as they can cram in. Last Sunday’s was particularly shocking. At least, I thought so at first.

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